WASHINGTON – U.S. Senators Chris Coons and Lisa Blunt Rochester (both D-Del.) joined the entire Senate Democratic Caucus in reintroducing Senator Patty Murray’s (D-Wash.) Paycheck Fairness Act on Equal Pay Day this week. This legislation would combat pay discrimination and help close the gender pay gap by strengthening the Equal Pay Act of 1963, ending the practice of pay secrecy, and strengthening available remedies to ensure wronged employees can challenge pay discrimination and hold employers accountable. U.S. Representative Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) led the reintroduction of the Paycheck Fairness Act in the House.

More than six decades after the passage of the Equal Pay Act of 1963, the gender wage gap still exists. While Delaware is better than most, women in the First State still only earn an average of 87% of what a man makes, according to the Delaware Office of Women’s Advancement and Advocacy. Over the course of a 40 year career, a typical American woman stands to earn $460,000 less than a man doing the same job, according to the National Women’s Law Center.

“Guaranteeing equal pay for equal work isn’t just about fairness—it would strengthen our economy and improve quality of life for Delaware’s women and families,” said Senator Coons. “Fixing the gender pay gap through the Paycheck Fairness Act is a critical step towards ensuring that hard work is valued equally, regardless of your sex.”

“It has been 50 years since the Equal Pay Act became law, yet the gender pay gap persists. It is simply unacceptable that for every dollar a man makes nationally, a woman is paid 75 cents,” said Senator Blunt Rochester, a member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee. “As Delaware’s former Secretary of Labor and State Personnel Director, I am proud to be standing with all my Democratic colleagues in reintroducing the Paycheck Fairness Act, legislation I have long supported. Now is the time for us to deliver on the promise of the Equal Pay Act and make equal pay for equal work a reality.”

“When you do the same work as your colleagues, you should get the same pay, and no one should get to rip you off and pay you less because you are a woman. The principle is simple—but the problem we are talking about is far from trivial; it’s an injustice that compounds over time, robbing women of hundreds of thousands of dollars over the course of their career,” said Senator Murray. “For anyone who is serious about fighting for women, for anyone who is serious about ensuring our economy is built on merit and not undermined by discrimination, this is basic stuff. But Trump and Elon—some of the richest men in the world—are right now eliminating a 60-year old executive order that helped ensure federal contractors don’t discriminate against women, illegally firing commissioners at the EEOC, which enforces existing pay discrimination laws, and making it easier to rip workers off. Women don’t want more discrimination. They don’t want more of their pay stolen by bosses like Elon. They just want the pay they earned. They just want to be treated decently—and paid fairly no matter who they are. Republicans can choose to stand with billionaires who cheat their workers—but by reintroducing the Paycheck Fairness Act today, Democrats are showing that we stand with women, we stand with workers, we stand for fairness, and we are going to keep fighting to make sure people get the pay they have rightfully earned, down to the last dime.”

“Equal Pay Day marks how far into the current year a woman must work to catch up to what her male counterpart earned in the previous year,” said Representative DeLauro. “Six decades after passage of the Equal Pay Act of 1963, women working full-time or part-time still earn 75 cents for every dollar earned by men. We are in a cost of living crisis – this must end. Equal pay for equal work is a simple concept – men and women in the same job deserve the same pay. It is time we make it real for the millions of American women who are being unfairly undervalued in the workplace. Let’s enact the Paycheck Fairness Act and empower working women by giving them the tools to ensure their contributions to the workplace are properly respected and reflected in their pay.”

Specifically, the Paycheck Fairness Act would:

  • Require employers to prove that pay disparities exist for legitimate, job-related reasons. In doing so, it ensures that employers who try to justify paying a man more than a woman for the same job must show the disparity is not sex-based, but job-related and necessary.
  • Ban retaliation against workers who discuss their wages.
  • Remove obstacles in the Equal Pay Act to facilitate participation in class action lawsuits that challenge systemic pay discrimination by allowing workers to opt-out, rather than requiring them to opt-in.
  • Improve the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s and Department of Labor’s tools for enforcing the Equal Pay Act. To help these enforcement agencies better uncover and remedy wage discrimination, the bill will require the collection of compensation data from certain employers, including federal contractors.
  • Provide assistance to all businesses to help them with their equal pay practices, recognize excellence in pay practices by businesses, and empower women and girls by creating a negotiation skills training program.
  • Prohibit employers from relying on and seeking the salary history of prospective employees.

Throughout his career, Senator Coons has supported efforts to close the gender pay gap and ensure equal pay for equal work, and he has cosponsored the Paycheck Fairness Act since it was first introduced.